Day #29 of my Search for a Soul Mate … And the day the Real Damien Echols Stood Up

I should probably (partially) apologize for lambasting Bayer earlier – they are sending me a new meter (gratis).  If it’s as good as the previous one, I officially withdraw my complaint.  If not … grrrrrr.  And it’s certainly taking them long enough.  I’ve gone a week without being able to test my blood sugar, because Bayer has taken so long to send the thing.  How did they ship it, via pack mule?

Another error that needs correcting:  no, it wasn’t that 1/3 of women have never had orgasms; the actual statistic was that it is quite normal for for overwhelming percent of women to NOT have experienced orgasms during sexual intercourse.  Which is not surprising.  Those statistics are revealing what most women should know anyway (if they had any self-knowledge to speak of):  the area being scraped raw by unnecessary friction merely so a man can please himself is not the same area  requiring stimulation for a woman to achieve an orgasm.  Which is why you have men unjustfiably proud of their little squirts and women doing Academy Award-winning Meg Ryan diner performances on a regular basis.

Attention Future Soulmate:  Don’t worry, as long as you listen, we’ll have fun.

Tuesday I went off to physical therapy – again – I saw them before the spinal fusion surgery over a year ago, and they were just pleased as punch to see me again, by which I mean:  they were NOT pleased as punch to see me again, since very little of their “therapy” worked the last time, so neither one of us can figure out why the neurologist sent me back to them.  Well, I shouldn’t say that.  They did realign my neck bones and kill the daily whiplash headache I had, but were unable to do anything about the bones sticking out of my lower spine.  Since they last saw me, I’d chopped all my hair off, so it took a few minutes before the memory banks kicked in.

“Oh, it’s YOU!  Why, we’re just pleased as punch to see you again!”

Result:  just as we all suspected:  nerve damage (duh!), about which they can do nothing, but they might be able to help me with the severe leg and foot tendon and muscle cramps.  Naturally, the first thing I did was lose the page of exercises I’m supposed to be doing within 5 minutes of receiving it.

Typical.  As soon as something wonderful happens, and as soon as Sekhmet does something wonderful, her enemy the demonic Sky Sadist pops up.  “Bitch looks too happy!  This will never do!  How can I make her life miserable??” 

Make her lose the physical therapy instructions, screw up her working blood glucose meter; make her buy an obscenely expensive replacement One-Touch meter from CVS; make the obscenely expensive replacement meter not work properly; make her lose her receipt so that she can’t return it; make the insulin results plateau without any way for her to prove to the doctor it because there are no meter readings … make sure she loses it during the only time of the year when the post office is so overwhelmed they can’t deliver the package with a new meter in it in a reasonable time … I go very quickly from being happy to banging my head against the desk in frustration.

I’d been so distracted by these other issues I hadn’t thought of my Daybook, Lucid Dreaming or Damien for a few days.  So it was a pleasant surprise to suddenly see that the real Damien Echols had decided to take over his Facebook Page. 

First thought:  Yay!!  I really had not wanted him to simply disappear; I enjoy his writing. 

Second thought:  uh-oh.  He’s now going to see first hand the abject levels of stupidity entertained by most of his Facebook followers and disappear anyway.  Twenty years of solitary confinement and NOW he’ll  be clutching his head and screaming in despair, poor guy.  So apparently, the psychic meant he has begun to heal PHYSICALLY; a few days of reading the idiocy of the weeping, sniveling, sniping women on his facebook page and he’ll be mentally unhinged in a manner of minutes.  Sorry, Damien.  I doubt there’s much you can do about that.

Idea for new invention:  “Estrogen B-Gone!” room freshener.  Hey, guys!  Surrounded by too many stupid panting women acting like kindergarten level assholes?  One quick spray of ….”

But I digress.  Went back to constructing my Daybook and found more feast days christians stole from pagans:  December 10^th,  Lux Mundi, Light of the World, the Roman celebration of the goddess Libertas and her torch of hope (think:  Statue of Liberty – that’s her).  The Catholic Church blatantly stole the celebration from the Romans, didn’t even bother to change the name and announced it was a Catholic celebration.  It is not and never was.  Isn’t there some sort of commandment aginst lying?

November 23^rd, St. Clement’s Feast Day.  I’m guessing that most people don’t give it too much thought as those who call themselves “blacksmiths” are few and far between these days … unless you’re dressed up like an elf and working on “Lord of the Rings”, or employed by a Renaissance Fair.  In any event, at some point in everyone’s shared histories, blacksmithing was a very lucrative profession.  The Catholic Church claims this is the Feast Day of Pope Clement I, the inexplicable patron saint of metalworkers and blacksmiths.  It is not.  It is a feast day stolen from Saxon pagans who celebrated the feast day of Wayland, or Wayland the smith, a mythical metalworker.  His feast day marked the start of winter.  Pope Clement, on the other hand, is not only not related in any fashion to blacksmithing and metalworking; he is instead known for creating forgeries that solidified the secular power of the Catholic church.  Charming guy.

“Clement is included among other early Christian popes as authors of the Pseudo-Isidoran (or False) Decretals, a 9th century forgery. These decrees and letters portray even the early popes as claiming absolute and universal authority.[29] Clement is the earliest pope to whom a text is attributed.”  (Wikipedia)

Uh-huh.  Gee, he sure sounds like a patron saint of blacksmiths to me.  Not.  I’m wondering if there’s a way for pagans to collectively sue the Vatican and the 1,001 different Protestant cults to get our feast days back.

Drove into the Andover Mall parking lot looking for the credit union I’d switched to.  Was not paying attention to the surroundings.  Got out of the car.  Suddenly was hit with nausea and stomach pains.  Was thinking, “What the heck did I eat?” but couldn’t think of anything unusual.  Was just about to get back in my car and drive home before I puked when I suddenly caught sight of the new seasonal business set up in the corner of the lot.  Said, “Oh, no … not again.”

I hadn’t had this experience since I was a child – although, now that I’m thinking about it – I know I hadn’t walked through a christian christmas tree lot since I was a child, either.  Now – all of a sudden – my childhood experiences with tree lots seemed to have returned.  I was wondering if perhaps my friendship with a dogwood had resurrected it.

The dogwood stood outside of my office and is shaped much like the tree in this photo, although her branches lean a bit further down towards the ground.  I’d always loved seeing her blossom, but I’d never met the hamadryad inside of her until quite recently.  A note on that:  some sources name her hamadryad as Kraneia, but other translations of the Deipnosophistae of Athenaeus identify Kraneia as being connected with a cherry.  Perhaps a flowering cherry and a flowering dogwood were considered nearly identical in ancient Greece.

In any event, that was not the name I heard when she first spoke to me:  Kraneia.  She used a feminine term for angel – something like “Angelique” – maybe even Angela.  I think what she meant was that she was a protective spirit, like an angel.  In any event I’ve called her “Angelique” ever since.  My sense of her was a being who was playful, joyful, giving and filled with love.

I do remember my first sense of her – I’d walked under her branches as her leaves were preparing to fall.  All of a sudden, everything went blissfully silent and still.  Keep in mind we’re on Broadway in Cambridge, so the sound of traffic disappearing is a real accomplishment.  I was surrounded by a sweet and loving cone of silence and love – and I remember just looking up at her in awe and being overwhelmed with the sense of love and tenderness she exuded.  A few days later she gave me a gift:  a beautiful rock she’d confiscated from some teenage boys who were throwing it at squirrels and birds the night before.  She said she slipped the rock under some of her leaves on the ground and hid it from them until they left.  She saved it for me, she said, knowing that I would never hurt anyone with it.  Which is true.  I then went and looked her up for my Daybook.

Dogwood Magical Properties: Wishes, secrets, loyalty and protection. The fire of passion, desire and will. Associated with fertility and sexual attraction, happiness and comfort.

Back when I was in college, I wrote an account of my childhood experiences with tree lots.  This account is not 100% accurate:  I left out my younger brother and sister who were running around and squalling at the same time, and my parents took a bit longer to decide that watching me puke every year wasn't worth it and bought an artificial tree.  But the rest of it is true.

THE CHRISTMAS TREE

Every year, after Thanksgiving, they would visit a local farm to buy a Christmas tree. At the age of two, she whimpered as they neared the farm, and when they arrived screamed and was hurried home, to regain what composure children of that age possess. At three, she knotted her face into folds as they neared, breathing heavily, covering her ears, weeping silently but at four, she remembered the sound of keening in her ears, and not knowing what she was hearing, complained of the pain in her head although nothing was noted but the suspicion of normal childhood vagaries. When she was five, she now knew what she was hearing. She stayed silent and still, trying not to listen. When asked if she were ill, she shook her head and unexpectedly vomited noisily in the back seat of the car. But when she was six, when told she was to be taken to buy a Christmas tree, she said, "No." Asked why she finally found the words and in her six year old voice, said something that explained


The
sound of
the cries she
could hear, had
always heard, they're
crying, she said, they hurt,
she said. They're dying, she said.
They can't breathe. They've been cut
in half, they're bleeding, they're screaming,
they're screaming, the trees are screaming, I
can hear them, I can feel them, I can't help them, she
said. Their feet are chopped off, their stumps are bleeding,
their stumps are bleeding,
The trees,
Mommy!
The trees,
Daddy!
Can't you
hear them?
Can't you
hear them?
Can't
you?

Her mother and father looked at each other for a long moment and without another word ushered her into the car. They drove to Sears, and picked out a silver metallic tree-effigy dusted in chemical snow, crinkling and tinkling like a silver bell and sparkling with ice-jewels. Which she loved with all her heart, for its silence and its stillness,

And its heavenly peace.

Day #27 on my Search for a Soul Mate

Has anyone noticed how appallingly pretentious poetry has become?  Pretentiously written, pretentiously reviewed, accessible only to the pretentious.  I hadn’t really paid all that much attention to poetry as a rule (like many people, I considered the art form ruined by the excessively pretentious) – and then I found this little gem, while researching Ivy for my Day Book:

MY WINDOW-IVY.

Over my window the ivy climbs,

Its roots are in homely jars;

But all the day it looks at the sun,

And at night looks out at the stars.

The dust of the room may dim its green,

But I call to the breezy air:

"Come in, come in, good friend of mine!

And make my window fair."

So the ivy thrives from morn to morn,

Its leaves all turned to the light;

And it gladdens my soul with its tender green,

And teaches me day and night.

What though my lot is in lowly place,

And my spirit behind the bars;

All the long day I may look at the sun,

And at night look out at the stars.

What though the dust of earth would dim,

There 's a glorious outer air

That will sweep through my soul if I let it in,

And make it fresh and fair.

Dear God! let me grow from day to day,

Clinging and sunny and bright!

Though planted in shade, Thy window is near,

And my leaves may turn to the light.

Mary Mapes Dodge

I loved the last line:  “and my leaves may turn to the light”.  Considering how often we lose out on poetry such as this – simple, touching - thanks to the snootily pretentious snobs among us, I was thinking of starting a “Real People Poetry Anthology”.  Anyone who has been previously published in a pretentious poetry anthology is barred from submitting anything to the anthology without issuing an apology to the 99% who are the REAL poetry people  (to steal a phrase from the Occupiers).  And yes, if you suspect I’m still holding a grudge against the University of Michigan Hopwood Award people for not even offering a simple thank you to the students who submit heart-felt poetry to them … you’re probably right.  Those Hopwood People really do need an “anti-pretentious spell” cast on them.  Really.

Written on Thanksgiving, 2011

7:30 A.M.  Turkey is in the oven.  Salad and relish in the serving dishes.  Giblets waiting for the gravy-making hour.  Stuffing waiting to go in the oven an hour ahead of time.  Pie is made and ready to go in the oven when the turkey is done.  I have something to be seriously grateful about.  The Lioness of Courage.  I ordered her a shrine.  Painted red, with flames.  [www.bethamine.com, in case anyone wants to see a nice affordable wall shrine.]  As I’m employed elsewhere, I can’t do the full Ancient Egyptian rites of temple service that the priests appointed by Ramses II would have conducted for her – that would take all day - but I can do the best I can.

Here in the United States, “Thanksgiving” can either be a day of thanks for all sorts of things, or a Day of Guilt and Atonement, considering the way westerners thanked the hosts who took pity on them for their stupidity in not preparing for a New England winter properly.  I know of at least two states that wisely decided to stop celebrating Columbus Day and instead celebrate Indigenous Peoples Awareness Day, or something to that effect.

I decided to move the injection time back an hour a day until I reach the evening medication hour – somewhere around 6-7 p.m – which is when my vacation ends and I’ll be going back to work.  I wanted to do it at night when I wasn’t worried about needing to leave for work.  Today will be the first day when I do it (inject myself with insulin) on my own.

Instead I discovered how easy it is for the Bayer pharmaceutical company to steal money out of the pockets of diabetics.  I got my test meter in 2005.  It used Ascensia Autodiscs (the test strips that are used to test my blood glucose).  Last time I bought autodiscs I bought quite a few boxes so that I wouldn’t have to buy them again for quite some time.  That “some time” just rolled around, so I went into CVS to buy some more.

WRONG!!!  Bayer had stopped making them.  I was told my meter was “too old” – five years is too old??!!?? – the University of Michigan Health Service gave me these things in 2005.  Too old??!!??  Only in the land of Greedy Shareholders and Criminal Management is it too old – had Bayer any conscience, they would have made these meters to last a lifetime.  Now they don’t even last five years, while still working perfectly. 

I now had to buy a new meter, new lancets and new testing strips.  The lancets were so weak they didn’t puncture anything.  The tester was so poorly designed it kept kicking out error messages.  The cost was astronomical.  I came home so angry I was prepared to go kick in Bayer’s front door and curse them and their greedy shareholders out, because, trust me when I tell you, the only reason they did this was to heist money out of the pockets of diabetics and put it into the pockets of shareholders.  (Note to all the idiots complaining about the OWS protestors?  1):  stop listening to Fox News because they are lying when they call protestors drug adicts and alcoholics.  Watch Global Revolution TV and see for yourself how desperately unethical ALL of the major news outlets are, and 2) Here’ a good reason why people are complaining.)  And of course I came home without the correct test strips and sat on my bed in tears, unable to test anything.